It is estimated that electrical theft alone results in millions of dollars of loss per year. Ontario, Canada reports an estimated cost of $500 million dollars per year. It is believed that the most significant contributor to electrical theft is the indoor cultivation of marijuana known as grow operations or “grow-ops”. While recent case law has made the recovery of lost energy revenue possible, the reality is that very little monetary recovery is made through court actions.
Along with the staggering costs related to the electrical theft, there are additional costs to the community which include property damage, increased potential for fires due to wiring required to tap into the grid, electrical brown-outs and power outages due to blown transformers.
Typically, relatively new single family residential properties having underground power lines are targeted as sites for grow-ops. The electrical power lines are readily bypassed and are more suitable than older services to provide the sustained amperage, typically a 120 amp draw that is required for a large commercial operation. Older services typically provide only 60 amp or 100 amp overhead lines which are more susceptible to malfunction.
Monitoring of electrical services at a location in the service which would detect bypassing of conventional metering is uncommon. Applicant is unaware of systems currently in use which are capable of economically identifying atypical usage patterns at the primary level and thereafter pinpointing specific households which may be of interest to the utility providers and to law enforcement.
Systems are known to monitor consumption at secondary lines which feed electricity from the transformer to the residence which are capable of detecting over-usage, being typically in excess of a predetermined value, such as about 50% of the expected for a single household. Over-usage due to a grow operation or the like at the primary level however becomes more difficult to detect as the over-usage is typically not seen as a significant alteration in measurement using conventional metering.
There is great interest in systems which can be used to identify uncommon consumption patterns, at the primary level, which may be indicative of utility theft and which do not infringe upon existing laws which protect individual rights and freedoms.